Employment test

An employment test helps you to determine the suitability of a job applicant. The idea behind these tests is that if high-scoring applicants make ideal candidates for the job. The most significant benefits of implementing an effective employee test include:

Increased employee retention and reduction in turnover costs
Higher productivity, more efficient and less time-consuming hiring process
Increased defensibility of the hiring process through the use of objective, validated metrics

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Why use Pointerpro to organize an employment test?

Get immediate feedback

Find out straight away whether a candidate is suitable or not and provide useful feedback.

Uniform basis

Employment tests provide a uniform basis for comparing the performance of applicants.

Guarantee objectivity

Gender and race rarely have an influence on the results of employment tests.

The importance of employment testing

Throughout any hiring process, employers want to gather as much relevant information on their candidates as possible. The problem is that traditional methods of getting to know candidates — resumes and interviews — often don’t yield the best insight. Research indicates that up to 78% of resumes contain misleading statements, while 46% contain actual lies. Similarly, interviews — especially unstructured ones — are subjective and ultimately serve as poor predictors of job performance.

6 Types of employment tests

Job-knowledge tests are particularly useful when applicants have certain knowledge that can only be acquired through training or experience. Job-knowledge tests are commonly used in fields such as computer programming, law, and financial management.
Cognitive tests can assess general intelligence and correlate highly with overall job performance. People with higher levels of cognitive ability tend to perform better. This is especially true for jobs that are particularly intellectually demanding.
Situational judgment tests are used as employee-selection and employee-screening tools and have been developed to predict employment success. These tests present hypothetical scenarios in a multiple-choice format. Applicants are asked what they would do in a difficult job-related situation. Situational judgment tests measure the suitability of job applicants by assessing problem-solving, service orientation, and striving for achievement.

Personality tests may potentially be useful in personnel selection. However, personality can also correlate with other aspects aside of job performance, such as leadership and effectiveness in a team environment.
Performance-based assessment tests help find out if someone can do the job for which they are applying. It is done through tests, which are often administered by HR or Hiring Managers. Performance assessments can be used as a pre-screening tool to test applied knowledge and skills-job match.
Physical tests. Some jobs require a certain amount of physical ability. Before hiring a person for these types of positions, an employer may administer a physical assessment to determine if the applicant meets minimum physical requirements. Law enforcement and emergency service positions are examples where physical agility testing is useful to ensure applicants can meet the physical demands.

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